Sustainability

Our approach to sustainability

Outside of the experience and environments we provide, we understand that how we behave as a business plays a major part in shaping how people view us.

A key element of the Group’s culture is the promotion of sustainability, which we believe enhances our ability to execute our strategy and deliver value for our customers, team and shareholders. As a nationwide multi-site business we seek to enhance the wellbeing of our people, our customers and the communities in which we operate.

Customers

Bowling is an activity that promotes healthy competition and provides an inclusive, interactive experience, enabling families and friends to spend quality social time together and improve their general wellbeing.

All of our centres have access for the disabled and we are committed to delivering an inclusive fun-filled experience for customers of all abilities. In FY2018, over £1.6m of concessionary discounts were redeemed across a number of user groups.

We recognise that the consequences of a poor diet are an important health challenge in the UK and continue to work with our suppliers to reduce the salt and sugar content of their products. Our new Hollywood Diner menu offers a range of healthier eating options, including salads and, for children, vegetable options in their range. Alongside this, we introduced a sugar-free option across a range of drinks categories including carbonated soft drinks, slush and mixers.

We maintain contact with regulatory bodies and our suppliers to ensure the correct decisions are taken in terms of our amusement area game content, quantity and age-appropriate mix.

Our people

At Hollywood Bowl Group our people are at the heart of everything we do and we are constantly looking at new ways to ensure we recruit, engage and retain the best talent in the industry.

Employing almost 2000 team members, we recognise the importance of offering a rewarding career to all of our team and providing them training and development opportunities throughout their employment.

Spending an average of £125 per head on team member training, we embark on a robust induction which starts as soon as a new employee begins their career with us. The induction covers our culture and ways of working, as well as an insight into the centre they are working in and customer service skills training. Following a successful launch of our new online learning system in FY17 to support all team members’ continuous development, we have now embedded this system across all centres and on average team members completed nine online learning modules in FY18. This features heavily during the team members induction period.

We actively encourage our team to develop their careers with us and we run several top talent programmes to assist them to do so. Our assistant manager in training programme offers team members the support and development to move into a successful management career and almost 100 team members enrolled on this programme in FY18. For those junior managers who aspire to run their own centres we have a centre manager in training programme and we are delighted to have been able to offer eight managers their own centres as a result of the programme in FY18.

Our centre managers are given the autonomy to run their centres as their own business and are key to the success of the Company. We give all of our management teams the opportunity to share in the success of their centre performance, by offering a significant bonus scheme.

A key part of our engagement and retention strategy is to recognise and reward great performance and the right behaviours. We do this at centre level through a team member of the month scheme where everyone has the opportunity to nominate their peers. We also award great behaviours with our pin badges, which our teams wear with pride on their lanyards. At centre manager level, the highlight is our annual awards ceremony. Following the FY18 awards ceremony, four of our centre manager winners will attend a business course at Disney in the Florida.

At Hollywood Bowl Group we pay all of our teams the relevant National Living / Minimum wage or in excess of this. We also commit to maintaining the differential between other roles in the business whenever there is a NL/MW increase.

We also offer our team members benefits which they have told us that they value, such as free bowling and discounted food and drink when they visit the centres socially, as well as a reduced price team member menu they can take advantage of when they are on shift.

We launched our save as you earn share save scheme (SAYE) in January 2018, giving all of our team the opportunity to share in the financial success of the business. Over 200 employees signed up for this scheme and we plan to launch a new SAYE in FY19.

We are committed to providing an inclusive environment and firmly believe that no-one should suffer discrimination on the grounds of race, colour, ethnicity, religious belief, political affiliation, gender, sexual orientation, age or disability.

A breakdown of our Board, senior management and all employees by gender is as follows:

FY2018 Number of Employees
Board

Male: 5
Female: 1

Senior Managers

Male: 11
Female: 4

Team

Male: 862
Female: 1038

Community engagement

As a business spread over 59 locations around the UK, we seek to support the communities we operate in by offering support through fundraising, awareness and access.

As a business operating in multiple locations around the UK, we seek to support the communities we operate in by offering support through fundraising, awareness and access.

This year we partnered with 59 charities and community projects local to each of our bowling centres and our Hemel Hempstead support centre.

The chosen charities primarily focus on benefiting families or younger people. Many fantastic fundraising events have taken place, including the popular ‘Hero Pin’ evenings, during which strike-scoring customers earned a donation to their centre’s charity.

Through donations and fundraising activities, more than £30,000 has been raised for our charities and projects. Our centre managers have direct responsibility for their local charity partnerships and the top-performing centre was honoured at our annual manager’s conference.

Health and safety

Bowling is a fun and safe way to keep active and we like to keep it that way. We design our centres and train our teams with this in mind, both for our customers’ and our teams’ welfare.

We comply with all safety legislation and act on all reported incidents. As part of our internal audit reviews, we undertake safety audits. The output from these reviews, as well as any incident reports, are reviewed by the Board on a monthly basis.

Hollywood Bowl Group Plc has a Primary Authority agreement with South Gloucestershire Council covering both health and safety and food safety.

Local charity relationships

An example of our work with local charities is the team at the Glasgow Springfield Quay centre who developed a wide ranging community programme to support Calum’s Cabin – an amazing charity which runs a holiday retreat for children with cancer.

The team built up a great relationship with charity volunteers and everyone pulled together to deliver a successful year of fundraising activity. This all raised the profile of the charity’s great work with our customers.

Several events were held including a charity bowling evening, raffles, cake sales and bucket collections and the team have committed to further help with volunteering alongside continued fundraising support.

Environment

Hollywood Bowl Group is committed to conducting its operations in an ethical and responsible manner. This is demonstrated in our environmental and energy achievements.

Greenhouse gas emissions

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for FY2018 have been measured under the Large and Medium-Sized Companies and Groups
(Accounts and Reports) Regulations 2008 as amended in 2013. The GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standards
(revised edition) and the data has been provided by Schneider Electric through analysis of our utility invoices.

Our commitment to efficiently and ethically use natural resources is ongoing.

We have reduced our emission ratio for scope 1 and 2 emissions by 48.4 or 29.8 per cent for FY2018 compared to the base year (FY2016).

Scope 1

Scope 2

Scope 1+2

Intensity Ratio

FY2016

895.7

8195

9090.7

162.3

FY2017

807.5

6532.6

7340.1

132.9

FY2018

979.1

5335.6

6314.7

113.9

We plan to further reduce our intensity ratio with a target of achieving less than 100 by 2021.

These reductions in electricity have been achieved by a range of methods, including:

Maximising efficiency of control strategies for air handling plant, and investing in new plant and machinery

We have converted almost all lighting to LED (the only lighting not converted are heat lamps and lighting controlled by PIR’s in infrequently visited areas within our centres)

Rollout of SavaWatt controls in 42 centres

Behavioural change within our teams such as conscious efforts to reduce electricity usage

Solar Power

We are working with both landlords and also external partners to install solar panels on our roofs via Power Purchase Agreements. The first centre to have landlord installed panels will be Stevenage and we are working with Green Nation to install panels on the roof of Bentley Bridge. Once these two centres are completed we will look at the potential for further roll out across the estate.

Recycling

We recycle our waste to help minimise our environmental impact.

In FY2017 we recycled 65.8% of our waste and this has increased to 68.4% for FY2018.

We recycle the cooking oil that we use; in FY2017 we had a 65.5% recycling level which increased to 77.5% for FY 2018.

We have also cut the amount of waste we generate by reducing the use of straws and napkins and we are working with our suppliers to introduce reduced-packaging products across our business.